DOI: 10.2478/genst-2013-0001
MALE VS. FEMALE / MIND VS. BODY: A COGNITIVE
DISCOURSE APPROACH TO TWO PLAYS BY SHAKESPEARE
ELENA DOMÍNGUEZ ROMERO
Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Avda. de Séneca, 2 Ciudad Universitaria, 28040 Madrid, Spain
[email protected]
Abstract: The aim of the present paper is twofold: i) to show that the idea
of a “savage mind” does not make sense unless accompanied by that of a
wrong restraining body which needs to be broken to let the so-called
“savage mind” out, and vice versa and ii) to prove this relieving process
to be ultimately affected by gender. While women seem to need to resort
to a third party body disguise in order to show their real selves out of
their constraining bodies, it is precisely men’s minds which aim to
liberate them. Examples to illustrate this idea will be taken from Rosalind
and Audrey in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, on the female side, and
Caliban and Ferdinand in The Tempest, on the other, male side.
Keywords: cognition, discourse, gender, Shakespeare
1. Introduction
Our analysis of the female characters Rosalind and Audrey in
Shakespeare’s As You Like It as opposed to the male characters Ferdinand
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and Caliban in The Tempest is aimed at demonstrating that Shakespeare’s
women seem to need to resort to a third party body disguise in order to show
their real selves out of their constraining bodies, while much more complex
mental devices appear to help men trying to dispense with their savage side.
With regard to the cognitive complexity achieved by Shakespeare in these
two plays, it could be said that men do better while women remain in second
place. However, the analysis of these two pairs of characters will reveal
female Rosalind’s mental power to successfully fight her restraining wrong
body. Caliban, meanwhile, can be liberated from a wrong mind thanks to
complex cognitive devices, but his body remains savage. The monstrous
nature of his mind is not conditioned by his wrong body. Rosalind’s
supremacy will be achieved by this supremacy of mind over body.
2. As You Like It
In order to start speaking about the female characters Rosalind and
Audrey in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, we need to go back to the “Eighth
Dialogue” of Andreas Capellanus’s Tractatus de amore (1184-1186), where
women of the higher nobility are advised not “[…] to be so quick to assent
to their lover’s desire, for the quick and hasty granting of love arouses
contempt in the lover and makes the love he has long desired seem cheap.
Therefore, a woman ought first to find out the man’s character by many
tests and have clear evidence of his good faith” (1982:132). Shakespeare is
perfectly aware of this when he opts for disguise to reconcile these two
radically opposed female characters in his pastoral play. Nobly-born
Rosalind will need to resort to a male disguise in order to get rid of her own
body and thus to feel free to test her beloved’s (Orlando’s) intention to be
finally allowed to enjoy his love through marriage. The plain goatherd
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Audrey, by contrast, is totally free right from the beginning to enjoy the
pleasures of love, with no need for any testing.
Rosalind has to disguise herself as a man to “serve” Orlando and to
become his confidant in matters of love. But in addition to this, she takes the
responsibility for Orlando’s love cure, serving him in this way too. So,
metaphorically speaking, Rosalind can also be said to “save” her beloved’s
life. At least, her “love cure” prevents him from dying from an impossible
love. Being the courtly, beautiful lady that she is, Rosalind is not in a
position to trust the love Orlando professes for her in his courtly poems.
This lack of confidence about Orlando’s true intentions prevents her from
showing her own love for him openly. Throughout the play, she can only
confess it to her cousin Celia: “O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that
thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love! But it can not be
sounded” (IV, 1:195-197), or try to explain her situation to Orlando once
she is hidden behind her Ganymede disguise: “You may as soon make her
that you love believe it, which I warrant she is apter to do than to confess
she does. That is one of the points in which women still give the lie to their
consciences” (III, 2:377-381).
In her male Ganymede disguise, though, Rosalind does have the
chance to test and even to mock Orlando’s love, challenging him to prove
that he is a desperate lover and to declare his love for her openly: “Then
your hose should be ungartered,... your shoe untied, and everything about
you demonstrating a careless desolation. [...] You may as soon make her
that you love believe it,...” (III, 2:361-70). Under such guise, she is able to
extract from him more declarations of his love for her, and in a shorter time,
than if he had known who she was. In this way, Orlando is even forced to
consider the possibility of marrying a Rosalind who, as a non-idealized
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wife, could turn out to be “more clamorous than a parrot against rain”, or
“more new fangled than an ape” (IV, 1:136-9). Only then does Rosalind
definitely make up her mind to save Orlando’s life through marriage, the
most effective remedy, in terms of the courtly code, for unrequited love.
Also in As You Like It, we are presented with the character of
Audrey, an illiterate goatherd who does not have to protect her virtue from
possible abuse by her lover Touchstone. She is not forced by convention to
feel the need to take part in a love debate to prove Touchstone’s real
intentions or faith before accepting his love and marrying him. But this is
exactly what Rosalind, the main female character in the courtly love story in
the play, is both conventionally and socially forced to do in order to
guarantee herself the secure marriage she too desires. Although the love
story of the courtly clown Touchstone and the young goatherd Audrey takes
place in the same pastoral setting, the Forest of Arden, they do not play the
traditional roles of the courtly love poet and the beautiful shepherdess. In
fact, it is not hard for the fool Touchstone to win Audrey’s amorous favour.
Rather to the contrary, he shows from the very beginning his intention of
winning Audrey’s love in a natural way, even if this implies marriage.
Both Rosalind and Audrey succeed in marrying their respective
suitors at the end of the play, despite their different origins and the different
conditions under which their love stories take place. Being women of the
early modern period, they can really only be examined in terms of their
relationship to the marriage paradigm (Jankowsky 1992:24). In this context,
it is not surprising that they both prefer a secure marriage that will ensure
them a safe place in society in the future. Both of them do finally make up
their mind to agree to the marriage ritual. Audrey ends up by meeting all the
requirements to achieve the secure position of a chaste wife, giving her the
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opportunity to become a respected widow in the future, despite her lack of
idealization and the fact that it is highly probable that she would have
accepted as natural the clandestine union Touchstone confesses (in an aside)
to preferring: “[…] to be married of him than of another, for he is not like to
marry me well; and not being well married, it will be a good excuse for me
hereafter to leave my wife” (III, 3:81-85). Not in vain, playing the role of
the plain goatherd, that is to say; enjoying a savage mind in an equally
savage body, she is not forced to feel the need to take part in any love
debate to prove Touchstone’s faith before revealing her own desire to
become a married woman. Courtly Rosalind, meanwhile, has to overcome
more obstacles than rustic Audrey to become free, finally, and safely
married to Orlando, whom she loves.
Her courtly origin, which leads her body to restrain the free
expression of her so-considered “savage mind”, deprives Rosalind of the
freedom she would need in order to express the emotions that Touchstone
and Audrey enjoy. Forced to profess an idealized love to Rosalind, Orlando
is unable as yet in his poems to show his open intention of marrying her.
Expected to keep up courtly manners, Rosalind is not allowed to admit her
love for Orlando either. In order to avoid revealing her desire to marry him,
she is conventionally supposed to miss the chance to discover her beloved’s
real intentions, or to opt for disguising tricks, thus breaking her restraining
courtly body to allow her mind to emerge.
3. The Tempest
In the case of The Tempest, we also find two characters, Caliban and
Ferdinand, who both end up playing the role of the slave-in-exchange-forjoy despite their apparently different motivations and backgrounds.
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Nevertheless, it is of extreme importance to notice at this point that these
two characters are male ones, this being the reason why, rather than
involving the use of disguise, their common achievements are to take place
through the use of a much more cognitive, complex device on
Shakespeare’s part. It is not surprising, then, that they both follow the
speech model established by Virgil’s second Eclogue in order to try to
obtain relief and joy through service, their common use of this Virgilian
source also being a good authorial hint to intended readers and audience that
they should blur the possible differences which seem to separate the two
characters throughout the story. Mey makes the general point that the act of
reading implies an open-ended invitation to the reader to join the author in
the co-creation of the story by filling in the gaps that the text leaves open.
But the reader’s act of understanding is not always dependent on what is
found in the actual text―or co-text―in so many words, but rather on the
total context in which these words are found―and are found to make sense,
through an active, pragmatic collaboration between author and reader (Mey
& Ringler 1998:255). However, it is important to remember at this point
that this is not found in the previous case, that of the female characters in As
You Like It.
Ferdinand is son to King Alonso. He arrives in Prospero and his
daughter Miranda’s island after being shipwrecked and remains there on his
own, convinced that his father has died along with the rest of the crew and
so imagining himself to be the new King of Naples following his father’s
death: “He does hear me,/ And that he does, I weep: myself am Naples,/
Who with mine eyes, never since at ebb, beheld/ The King my father
wrecked”. But shortly after his arrival in the island he falls in love with
Miranda, and this soon leads him to be pleased with the idea of serving her
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and her father Prospero, despite his noble condition: “Might I but through
my prison once a day/ Behold this maid. All corners else o’th’earth/ Let
liberty make use of space enough/ Have I in such a prison” (I, 2: 491-494).
Caliban, by contrast, is son to the witch of the island, Sycorax, who
was “banished for one thing she did” (I, 2:267), and claims to be the owner
of the island. He is a “freckled whelp, hag-born, not honoured with/ A
human shape” (I, 2:283-284) who has been obliged to serve Prospero and
his daughter Miranda ever since he was accused of trying to force the lady’s
virtue. Miranda takes her father’s part and tries to justify him by saying that
Caliban is actually a savage who never took into consideration the fact that
she had always pitied him, so that he deserves his present condition in life:
“I endowed thy purposes/ With words that made them known. But thy vile
race-/ Though thou didst learn-had that in’t which good natures/ Could not
abide to be with; therefore wast thou/ Deservedly confined into this rock,/
Who hadst deserved more than a prison” (I, 2:356b-361).
Despite the obvious differences, though, the audience can now
perceive Caliban and Ferdinand as two young heirs forced into slavery for
love-related reasons. Courtly Ferdinand is so in love with Miranda that he is
happy to serve her and her father in exchange for the lady’s favour. Savage
Caliban has been turned into a slave after trying to force Miranda in order to
win her love favour too.
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Both of them are thus young heirs who have been turned into love
slaves. If we follow Fauconnier and Turner’s model when trying to depict
the cognitive scenario in the audience’s mind, we can say that at any
moment in the construction of the conceptual network, the structure that
inputs seem to share is captured in a generic space, which, in turn, maps
onto each of the inputs (2002:47). This means Caliban, and Ferdinand, and
their love for Miranda. A given element in the generic space maps onto
paired counterparts in the two input spaces. That is to say: Caliban and his
most defining characteristics on the one hand, and Ferdinand on the other,
the former being a lascivious monster, son to a witch, and the latter a
handsome prince who, at the same time, is also a good courtier and a
Petrarchan lover. In Blending Theory, structure from two inputs―mental
spaces―is projected onto a new space; the blend here consists of
coincidental features which characterize both Caliban and Ferdinand. They
are both young heirs who have been turned into love slaves.
Because of his noble status, Ferdinand woos and worships Miranda
as if he was at court, despite the wilderness and isolation of the island. His
courtly love speech makes sense in this context thanks only to Miranda’s
education. She too comes from court, despite having been brought up by
Prospero on the island. As the latter tells his daughter: “Have I, thy
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schoolmaster, made thee more profit/ Than other princes can that have more
time/ For vainer hours, and tutors not so careful” (I, 2:171-174). Thus
Ferdinand can sing Miranda’s superlative beauty according to the courtly
conventions: “But you, O you, / So perfect and so peerless, are created / Of
every creature’s best” (III, 1:37-48). He even demonstrates his willingness
to serve her in exchange for her favour according to the Servitium
amoris―servitude of love―convention:
FERDINAND
There be some sports are painful, and their labour
Delight in set off; some kinds of baseness
Are nobly undergone; and most poor matters
Point to rich ends. This my mean task
Would be as heavy to me, as odious, but
The mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead,
And makes my labours pleasures. O she is
Ten times more gentle than her father’s crabbed,
And he is composed of harshness. I must remove
Some thousands of these logs and pile them up,
Upon a sore injunction. My sweet mistress
Weeps when she sees me work, and says such baseness
Had never like executor. I forget.
But these sweet thoughts do even refresh my labours,
Most busil’est when I do it. (III, 1: 1-15)
Caliban, meanwhile, hates serving Prospero and his daughter
Miranda to the extent that he does not hesitate to try to persuade another
character in the play, Trinculo, to take him as his servant. In exchange, he
only expects him to kill Prospero and gain him relief from his oppression. In
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fact, he feels such a need for freedom that his speech resembles that of an
insistent lover trying to convince his beloved to go with him and be his love:
CALIBAN
I’ll show thee the best springs; I’ll pluck thee berries;
I’ll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough.
A plague upon the tyrant that I serve!
I’ll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee,
Thou wondrous man. (II, 2: 154-158)
I prithee let me bring thee where crabs grow,
And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts,
Show thee a jay’s nest, and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmoset. I’ll bring thee
To clust’ring filberts, and sometimes I’ll get thee
Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me? (II, 2: 161-166)
Caliban’s invitation is very much in the style of the Munera
amoris―catalogue of gifts―as used by Corydon in Virgil’s Second
Eclogue, one of the most important sources for catalogues:
Come hither, lovely boy! See, for you the Nymphs bring lilies in heaped-up
baskets; for you the fair Naiad, plucking pale violets and poppy-heads, blends
narcissus and sweet scented fennel-flower; then, twining them with cassia and
other sweet herbs, sets off the delicate hyacinth with the golden marigold. My own
hands will gather quinces, pale with tender down, and chestnuts, which my
Amaryllis loved. Waxen plums I will add –this fruit, too, shall have its honour.
You too, O laurels, I will pluck, and you, their neighbour myrtle, for so placed you
blend sweet fragrance. (II:45-55).
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Caliban is “a deeply un-Virgilian creation” (Bate 1993:247); a
monster who can scarcely express himself despite Miranda’s efforts to teach
him how to speak properly. Despite his desperate invitation and his
catalogue of offerings, Trinculo cannot avoid thinking of him in terms of the
money that he could make if he took him to England with him:
What have we here-a man or a fish?-dead or alive? A fish, he smells like a fish; a
very ancient and fish-like smell; a kind of not-of-the-newest poor-John. A strange
fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, and had but this fish painted, not a
holiday-fool there but would give a piece of silver. There would this monster make
a man-any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to
relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a
man, and his fins like arms! Warm, o’ my troth! I do now let loose my opinion,
hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a
thunderbolt. (II, 2:24-35)
It is extremely surprising, then, that, despite being a monster,
Caliban has enough knowledge of the Classics to follow Virgil’s model in
his attempts to convince Trinculo to kill Prospero in exchange for his
service and adulation. But the fact that Ferdinand also goes to Virgil’s
Eclogue II for the conclusion of his love speech is no doubt even more
striking. Corydon concludes Eclogue II with the words: “See, the bullocks
return with the ploughs tilted from the yoke, and the sinking sun doubles the
lengthening shadows: yet me love burns; for what bound may be set to
love?”. In quite a similar way, Ferdinand concludes his speech by pointing
out: “O most dear mistress, / The sun will set before I shall discharge / What
I must strive to do” (III, 1:22-24). And, in doing so, he is actually rounding
off Caliban’s catalogue. The catalogue of offerings in Caliban’s invitation
corresponds to lines 45-55 of Eclogue II, while Ferdinand’s words―“The
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sun will set before I shall discharge / What I must strive to do” (III, 1:2324)―match the end of Corydon’s song. Thus, not only do the two
characters follow the same classical model, despite their different cultural
and social backgrounds: their speeches even complement one another so
that Ferdinand’s words are the perfect end to Caliban’s persuasive speech:
Shakespeare consciously makes Caliban and Ferdinand follow the
same classical source as well as the same speech model despite the initial
differences between them. The former is a man savage in mind and body
whose intention is to rid himself of Prospero through murder:
CALIBAN
No more dams I’ll make for fish,
Nor fetch in firing
At requiring,
Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish:
‘Ban, ‘Ban, Ca-Caliban
Has a new master-get a new man!
Freedom, high-day! High-day, freedom!
Freedom, high-day, freedom! (II, 2:175-181)
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He asks Trinculo to accept him as his new servant with affectionate words
of invitation. Prospero is to be killed so that Caliban can achieve the
freedom he craves for. But he only manages to become the butt of
Trinculo’s jokes. Throughout the play Trinculo always refers to Caliban as:
“An abominable monster!” (II, 2:152-153), “A most ridiculous monster, to
make a wonder of a poor drunkard!” (II, 2:159-160), or even “A howling
monster; a drunken monster!” (II, 2:172).
Ferdinand, on the other hand, is actually a courtly man in love with
Miranda. His words can easily adopt the common structure of a love speech
because the beloved is sufficiently learned and ready for courtship despite
her isolated life on the island. But this speech works only as long as
Miranda responds positively to his service and courtship and allows him to
obtain her favour:
FERDINAND
I am, in my condition,
A prince, Miranda; I do think a kingI would not so!-and would no more endure
This wooden slavery than to suffer
The flesh-fly blow my mouth. Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you did
My heart fly to your service, there resides
To make me slave to it, and for your sake
Am I this patient log-man. (III, 1:59-67)
FERDINAND
O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,
And crown what I profess with kind event
If I speak true; if hollowly, invert
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What best is boded me to mischief: I,
Beyond all limit of what else i’ th’ world,
Do love, prize, honour you. (III, 1:68-73)
MIRANDA
I am your wife if you will marry me;
If not, I’ll die your maid. To be your fellow
You may deny me, but I’ll be your servant
Whether you will or no. (III, 1: 83-86)
Caliban and Ferdinand end up playing the same role of slave-inexchange-for-joy despite their supposedly different social conditions. They
both follow the same classical model from Eclogue II when they try to gain
relief and joy through service. And the fact that they are able to use the
same speech model as well as the same Latin source dissipates possible
differences. Though this goal is left implicit in the reference to this common
classical source, it is Shakespeare’s clear intention to achieve it. It is
definitely not by chance that the two speeches blend together, and the
author’s expectations are met once the intended audience is placed in a
position to decode this seemingly invisible, implicit direction.
4. Conclusion
It could be preliminarily concluded that men take precedence while
women are left in second place when it comes to the cognitive complexity
achieved by Shakespeare in these two plays under consideration. Rosalind
has the right mind, proved to be savage only when restrained by a wrong
courtly body. In the case of this female character, mind and body can be
easily reconciled through the use of such a common and simple device as
disguise. By contrast, Caliban is portrayed as a savage-minded character
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enclosed in a monstrous body. His savage mind can only be broken by
means of highly complex cognitive devices to be deciphered with some
effort by a limited intended audience, while Rosalind’s wrong body was
capable of being reversed through disguise thanks to the rightness of her
mind. Still, Caliban’s body remains savage, and this makes Rosalind both
cognitively and physically superior.
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Brisenden, Alan. (Ed.) 1994. William Shakespeare. As You Like It. Oxford, New York:
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Lindley, David. 2002. The New Cambridge Shakespeare: The Tempest. Cambridge:
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Fairclough, H. Rushton, trans. 1999-2000. Virgil. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University
Press.
Fauconnier, Gilles & Mark Turner. 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the
Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books.
Jankowsky, Theodora A. 1992. Women in Power in Early Modern Drama. Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Mey, Jacob L. 1998. When Voices Clash: A Study in Literary Pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton
de Gruyter.
Walsh, P. G. (Trans.) 1982. De amore. Capellanus, Andreas. Tractatus de amore (11841186). London: Duckwoth.
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